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User blog:Basilisk Centauri/The Weird and Wonderful PR Fandom of FanFiction
Welcome! If you are reading this, you are probably crazy. If you are not reading this, then you are EXTREMELY CRAZY. HOW DARE YO- Sorry getting off-topic. ALL EXAMPLES ARE FROM FANFICTION.NET, in the Movies/Pacific_Rim archive. OK, so we've got a few different "Subcultures" of our epic fandom. Pacific Rim! So far, I'm only a part of the FanFiction and the Wiki subcultures, and of course in the main culture, but I'm here to tell you (and in some cases warn you) about the culture that is the FANFICTION HORDES. (Blog with ''links: here) 'First, we shall discuss the Jaegers. The Jaegers, ah le giant robots of anti-doom and lotsa-destruction. Scientience. One of THE most popular AU's (Alternate Universe(s)) is Scientient Jaegers. There are three distinct types of scientience: *It simply was and always shall be. These fics often come with either slow, kinda thickheaded giant Jaegers, or fully aware and fully operational without pilots. Almost always in these fics, the Jaegers will be going about doing random things (such as bragging) while waiting for the next Kaiju attack. Sometimes, the random ''is greatly boldened. And unfortunately, Jaegers cant get the same kind of upbringing humans do... Example: "Unsuccessful Attempts at Seducing Gipsy Danger" *Honey, I shrunk the Jaegers! In these fics, the Jaegers somehow become human-sized. Either through some new fancy Kaiju puking on them, or even Tendo building them some androids. These Jaegers often emerge completely aware; sometimes without any experiences of their own, or their pilots'. Often, they already have their own personalities. These fics tend to be rather popular among the fandom, and get a lotta reviews. One example: "Artificial Empathy" (kinda short, but it gets the idea of the Kaiju being an excuse for anything to happen) Another example (mine): "Pacific High: Tales From Yeah, 00ps" A third example: "Teen Jaeger Adventures" (Inspired by http://chibi-jaeger-adventures.tumblr.com/ RikaHara's Chibi Jaeger Adventures on Tumblr) *Hey, since when could that robot move on its own?! These fics are all about how the Jaegers are slowly evolving into their own selves. Their personalities are often either a combanation of their pilots', or leaning closer towards the more dominant pilot, in terms of personality. Striker Eureka is almost garunteed to be portrayed as a 250ft tall Chuck Hansen. A fantastic example of an emerging scientience: "Chasing Alice" (Most reviewed fic in the fandom) Jaeger Genders. I have already gone over this a little in the thread, but I'll just repost it here since it is pretty much the inspiration for the whole freaking blog-writing anyways. SapphireStardust wrote: lol, I agree. While some fanfiction may include factual information, a lot of it doesn't. I wonder where the fanfiction authors get their info on the other Jaegers being male. * Lily Ford wrote: Well, like anyone, assumption based on gender roles. Anything that is not explicitly refereed to as female is often thought of as male. Sort've like the trope subversion in films, where the good or bad guys think they're getting beat by a guy and suddenly, the film reveals a woman has been kicking them around. * Basilisk Centauri wrote: From what I can tell, most of teh Jaeger's genders are derived from either: *A hugely distict physical appearance, a bit like Gipsy Danger (although I cant really say if that difference is a huge one, anyway). In there, Gipsy's actually about 50;50 male/female. *Their pilots, like Crimson Typhoon. That Jaeger had been piloted by male triplets, and in the fics where the Jaegers are scientient and/or human sized, it tends to be male, three armed, and loves basketball. Also tends to be either extremely good with handy stuff, or a total klutz. *Or some overwhelmingly awesome feature that just seems to be better/easier done in that gender. Cherno is Russian, and everyone loves the typical Russian sterotype with broken english, can litterally survive any punishment, and mostly speaks with his fists. *Sometimes, it's just pilot attitude. Striker Erueka, when depicted as scientient or having a gender, is always depicted as a male. Specifically, a total jerk like Chuck. Disturbingly, half of those fics are romances between Striker and Gipsy... Heck, I could probably write a whole blog post about the way the FanFiction community uses the Pacific Rim universe XD * SapphireStardust wrote: Thank you for the great explanation Basilisk, since I always thought that for mecha genders were determined by appearance, such as the more slender mecha are females, and also the interface of the bot (Gipsy Danger has a female voice for the interface, thus being female). I can definitely see those points as indicators for helping to determine a gender of a mecha, even though mecha and robots have no gender; it's humans that want to assign gender (I hate calling robots/mecha "its"; it just sounds so impersonal). I can only imagine what the FanFiction community imagines for the Pacific Rim characters. O_O * Basilisk Centauri wrote: That AI was actually the Jaeger AI, stationed in LOCCENT. It would have been seen/heard in all the Jaegers if we'd gotten more screen time with them when they were getting ready to drop. And yes, in the FanFiction community there are some very, VERY wacked out ideas. Hence this blog. Anyways, next up we have... Shipping. Welp, it's come to this. The most common (heck, the other two hardly even have ''any ''ships) is Gipsy/Striker. I do remember one fic where Crimson Typhoon and Cherno Alpha gained semi-scientience and sorta woke up the whole Shatterdome (including their pilots with a very... ''unique form of Ghost-Drifting... and yes, the Russian won the "I've got a bigger dick than you!" competition) with a "Hey we can think now! Let's attempt to breed!" episode. What? Jaegers need some love too! (Cue Glitch talking about the Piston Crotch weapon featured in one of my more disturbing fics...) For some reason, Striker and Gipsy, despite being rivals (in most cases) and one hell of a pain in the ass (glaring at Striker), they can get together like nothing else. (except maybe glue and duct-tape cross-breed, but that's offtopic again). Example of Crimson/Cherno: "Longing" (Rated M) (ROBOTSECKS) (which completely ignores human anatomy) OC's (Own Characters) There's a few of these fics (OK OK, there's a lot of them). OC Jaeger's tend to be made in the Jaeger Designer, or the writer's mind. One example (which I havent read yet, but I'm definitely going to be): "Survival of the Fittest: Aftermath" Another example (mine): "Ring of Fire" Tell me in the comments if you think I've missed something. That way I can get around to fixing it sooner. '''The Pilots, Rangers, and other general staff members. Yippee! We can finally get around to the important human aspect of the fandom! Shipping. One of the community archives is labelled "Analog Love". MoriXBeckett - 'nuff said. And really, that's all there is to it. Those two are THE SECOND most popular ship in the FF community, but if all OC pairings could be counted as a single ship, then boy... Chuck is a flipping relationship magnet. Sure, there's plenty of Raleigh/OC, but the sheer number of Chuck/OC fics is shocking. I suppose it's a bit like the GONE community where the bad guy (le sadist with the whip-arm) had a bazilllion OC ships (and he's the most machoistic anti-fem person I've ever read about!). Also off-topic again, but somebody made a parody fic (How does he do it? ), and it's really funny. All explained even if you dont know that book series XD (keeping this link because I doubt anyone would be able to find the fic without it) Anyways, Chuck, Herc, and Raleigh (even Yancy), and all suffering with a hundred relationships an hour, all with OC's. Tendo, Stacker, and occasionally some other Shatterdome member will get a relationship (I have an unfortunate suspision of Pacific High being the only Stacker/OC ((which I'm not even sure is gonna go ahead)) in the archive). But, for some strange reason, THE MOST POPULAR SHIP OF ALL TIME IN THE PACIFIC RIM FANFICTION COMMUNITY IS... Newt/Hermann I dunno. Hermann is married, Newt is... Newt, and all it takes to get the fandom going is a single awkward handshake. And/or attempting to shove a knife up someones nose. It's almost impossible to go through a single page of fics without stumbling across a Newt/Hermann. Here's one of the less... agressive ''ones... "You're All That I Want And Nothing I Need" Alas, that isn't the end of it. Herc/Chuck is terribly common, as is Raleigh/Yancy. While this may make me sound like a homophobe or something, I'm not! Again, here I am going off-topic, but I support gay/lesbian rights. If you want to argue about it, I'll see you on my message wall or something. But anyways, I just find the sheer number of incest (which I really dont support quite as much... :/) and Yaoi (is that the right term?) fics featuring those six guys is disturbing. I've spent like one and half hours on this so far, so I might be putting examples in later. (And, my god, I've barely even covered half of this report) Own Characters! There's heaps. Not all a Jaeger pilots or Rangers, but a substantial amount of them are. Around 60-80% of the Jaeger pilot OC's are often piloting Canon Jaegers, such as rebuilt and/or restored Jaegers. I think there's been at least one Tacit Ronin restored, and there's a whole bunch of Coyote Tango's out there. One fic I particularly liked was known as "Trust". It featured a Raleigh/OC and a Solo-Coyote pilot. Almost all other non-Jaeger-Pilot OC's tend to get romantically involved with the Jaeger pilots (if they get a ship at all), and currently the 'Most Popular OC Of All (PR Fandom) Time' is known as Jasmine (or Jazmine) Beckett. As far as I know, Canon only refers to her in such un-informal vagueness that using her and not labelling her as an OC just isnt right. I dont think anybody actually has enough information about her to write her up in-character. But anyways, the best Chuck/OC (Jasmine Beckett) fic; "Heart Shaped Wreckage" . Note that it is labelled (M), but currently (2nd of October, 2013) only has bare mentions of any explicit content. This fic could also be put in the OC Jaegers and OC Jaeger pilots section, (lol just realised that ''is ''where I put it XD), but I think it goes well here. Am I going off-topic again? Meh, up to the two-hour mark now... 'Plot Types (sometimes known as Cliche's ((or something like that))) So whats a common story? I'm going to attempt to list what I know here. Prequels! Exclusively done in pre-movie times, ranging from the beginning of the war to like litterally five minutes before the movie. These often contain Canon characters in their Jaegers going through their kill-count before destruction. Doesnt always stick to Canon in terms of times, places, and Kaiju, but they do tend to try. The Second Kaiju War Always post-movie. I can almost garuntee that aside from the mandatory Gipsy Danger 2.0 (which is sometimes ignored or shoved into some part of the world off-camera), almost all Jaegers will be OC's. Often, it starts in either just-after-the-first-war, stating all who have miraculously survived; *Chuck's all banged up, like stuck in stuck in recovery for the next two years, is still a jerk, but Pentecost shoved him out into the escape pod at the very last moment. Any later and he woulda gone BOOM ''with his Jaeger. *They just survived and thrived! No need for any of them to die at all! (They killed everything that shouldn't be on this planet) *Zombies. (yes, I have seen a couple of Monster AU's and Demon AU's. Striker Eureka somehow became a zombie...) Anyways, once introductions are done, generally one of two billion things happen. Or three, if they're lucky. Paranoia Preperations! In which Humanity finally does the right thing for no reason and re-instates the Jaeger Program. *WILL FINISH THIS LATER 'I Forgot What I Wanted To Put Here. Meh, Time For Recomendations! Exactly what it says on the can. I'll just put some recommendations here... Tell 'em Pyro sent ya! ;D Unsuccessful Attempts at Seducing Gipsy Danger = Scientient Jaegers, partial parody, Cherno's got internet access and the Shatterdome probably really wishes they knew how to turn off the Wi-Fi. Artificial Empathy = Gipsy Danger gets covered in Kaiju Puke and is shrunk down... just to have a midnight chat with Mako. Pacific High: Tales From Yeah, 00ps = Oh where oh where has thou coffee dissapeared to? Partial parody, series of misadventures with a large array of character types. Teen Jaeger Adventures = (Inspired by RikaHara's Chibi Jaeger Adventures on Tumblr) Post-Apocalypse-Cancelling, human teenage Jaegers. And the world thought the Kaiju were scary... Chasing Alice = (Most reviewed fic in the fandom) The apocalypse has been cancelled. Now what? As Gipsy finds out, beating a Kaiju upside the head with a freighter had been the easy part. (Post Movie). Longing (Rated M) = (ROBOTSECKS) (which completely ignores human anatomy) Five Rangers are woken up in the middle of the night to find some very... awake... Jaegers. Survival of the Fittest: Aftermath = On my To-Read list. Very big, and from the looks of the first few chapters, very well written. Post-Movie, paranoia preperations (I think). Ring of Fire = Post movie, paranoia preperations, lots of concepts (at least that's what I'm planning on). Also contains WWIII and (soon) a Second Kaiju War. (Trust me, I've got a great explanation for the Kaiju, just wait a chapter or two...). I wrote this one, and I find it kinda hard to do a summary for here :/ You're All That I Want And Nothing I Need = non-smut Newt/Hermann. The two finally try to sort out their feelings. Trust = In which Raleigh falls in love with one very easy to piss off person. Set somewhere in the movie (well, Mako's there so meh). Heart Shaped Wreckage = When she turned 22, Jasmine Beckett had bigger problems to face. Like an insensitive douchebag Jaeger Pilot. Staring into the Abyss- An Oral History of the Kaiju War = Jaeger Pilots arent the only ones who have to deal with the mess of the war. Child's Play = This is just plain adorable. "When Herc once said that he would give anything to give Chuck back his childhood, he didn't think it would literally mean having to look after his four year old son again." We're Caffeinating the Apocalypse = Because there's nothing better than the Beckett Brothers running a Cafe, and the Hansen team owning their own Bakery. Le "Coffee Shop" AU, which many people in the community had never heard of until then. Turns out its actually a pretty popular AU for writing lol Pacific Rim Shenanigans = "Marshal Pentecost held no fear of the ferocious Kaiju that were tearing up the earth. It was the eccentric scientists and crazy, temperamental, egotistical jaeger pilots that kept him awake at night." Pudding Talk = Analog Fluff plus chocolate!!! Invasive Procedures = Explains how Karloff got such a massive forehead. (mostly facepalming at these guys) Lazarus Syndrome = Just read it. (also I have no idea what Lazarus Syndrome is) "Raleigh's never told anyone, but he's pretty sure he died in his escape pod after nuking the Breach." Grace of Hand and Thigh = Very well written, but am seriously concerned about this person's meaning of "Vague". Rules and guidlines for Rangers and Jaegers = Scientient Jaegers cause trouble. The Marshall tries to limit this destruction as much as possible... and it kinda backfires. Watch Me Come Alive = Cool fic about the Jaegers gaining scientience. Also about someone attempting to shove Striker in a museum. Gipsy Danger: Updated = In which Raleigh finds a mini-fridge in the Conn-Pod. Death and Back Again: The Life of Gipsy Danger = A retelling of the movies events from a "different" perspective... WRITTEN BY OUR VERY OWN REAPER WITH NO NAME!!! (who is also taxing us to give him feedback on the later chapters) Pacific War: The Years Past = WRITTEN BY OUR VERY OWN CHROME COLOSSUS!!! (who I still need to interrogate and get some info out of...) I have done some editing and posted it on FF, as was requested in the blog post. UPDATED OCTOBER 26!!! (I'm still on the lookout for more to add to this list. If you've got a suggesstion, feel free to let me know and I'll add it) ''MORE TO COME SOON IF I EVER GET AROUND TO UPDATING THIS ''(I have reposted this on the fanon wiki. Any further updates regarding recomendations will likely be put there instead) Category:Blog posts